SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS
The time to go into the winter woods for love of them is in the
still chill of dawn when the blue-black of the west is hardly yet
touched with the purple that heralds the day, when the high sky in
the east begins to warm from gray to gold and below black twigs
make lace against an amber glow that draws one as does the flame
the moth. At such a time the cold of the night may lie bitter on
the open fields and the snow crystals there whine beneath the
tread, but in the deep heart of the woods the warmth of the day
before is still held entangled, an afterglow of the sun that waits
his golden coming once more. At that hour I like to set my course
eastward. The wind, if there be one, will be at my back and half
its keenness dulled thereby, and the ever visible, growing promise
of the sun warms almost as much as his later presence.
Our coldest midwinter nights are still and the tangle of the trees
enmeshes a protecting warmth that the outside cold cannot
penetrate altogether. This is the outer winter overcoat of the
woods. Even deciduous trees provide it and the level boughs of
evergreens give layer after layer of air that fends from the cold.
Even without the snow, the frost penetrates but a little way in
the earth of the woods. No matter how low the temperature above
the tree-tops and in the open spaces, the ground beneath the trees
hardly freezes, and, if the snow comes, the moment its blanket is
spread the temperature beneath it warms to above freezing and the
frost comes out. Deep snows are hard on certain winter birds, but
they are the salvation of many of the smaller winter animals and
they provide man with one of the chief joys of the winter woods.
Going forth at dawn one has the full joy of the day before him and
need leave no pleasure untasted. It is something worth while to
meet the sun on such a morning. No wonder the ancient Persians
worshipped him. Even his first rays enfold you with a warmth that
the thermometer might not notice but which is none the less real
for all that. They set the fires of the spirit burning more
brightly, warming the cockles of the heart and raising the
temperature of the man if not that of the air about him. The
pleasure of the pathless woods which is to be yours for all day is
sweetest in the first encounter. Toward the sun your goal glows
with red fire and the woods seem in its burning to celebrate your
advent. You move eastward the chief figure in the procession.
For it always seems to me as if at winter sunrise all things of
the wood move forward in this matutinal procession of welcome to
the coming warmth of the new day. As a matter of fact, of course,
they do. The whole round earth is swinging toward the east at a
wondrous pace. But it is more than that. The little winds of dawn
are drawn toward the rising column of heated air beneath his glow.
They come out of the nether cold of the night and it is the chill
of their passing which often brings the temperature a little lower
as the sun shows above the horizon, but they go to him to get warm
just as the rest of us do. It may be fancy, but it always seems to
me that the morning birds on their first hunt for breakfast work
eastward. The first flight of the crows is apt to be in that
direction and the chickadees hunt from the south side of one tree
to that of the next, making the sunward side of the grove their
rallying place. The trees in growth reach always toward the sun,
stretching their limbs longest on the sunny side, and it always
seems to me as if in winter they could be seen to yearn in the
same direction with the fond fingers of bare twigs. I have an idea
that measurements made at leaf-fall of one year and again at bud-time
of the next would show this. But there is really no need. We
have but to go forth in the woods of a clear, still winter morning
to feel the impulse ourselves and to know that it is universal.
Out of this protecting snow at dawn come the small folk of the
winter woods and to be with them there is to be at the meeting
place of elves. He who is very wise as to their ways may see them,
once in a while some one of them, or, if he be very fortunate,
more than one. Without doubt to live in the woods always would be
to see them all, to acquire to the full the elfin quality one's
self and be one of the clan. But they become visible only rarely
to the occasional visitor, these real elves and hobgoblins, and
often at the best we must note their presence by the trail they
have left behind. Here has passed the rabbit. Since earliest light
he has been tracking up the woods in his hunt for breakfast, but
who sees him do it? There the white-footed mouse has made a
curious pattern of foot-dots from his home stump to some other
entrance to a way beneath the snow, the straight trail of his tail
showing between the tiny foot tracks. In another place the fox has
left his curious one-two-three, one-two-three footsteps.
[Illustration: Deer in the Winter Woods]
It is sufficient sport for the morning to take the early rabbit
trails and see what has become of their maker. Some woodsman may
have seen the rabbit making these tracks unconscious of
supervision, but I will confess that I never have. Up North I have
often watched the varying hare about his business when he had no
idea that I was one of the party, but the sophisticated
Massachusetts rabbit has always been too clever for me. But it is
not so difficult to follow the tracks, confusing as they sometimes
are in their labyrinthine route, to their end for the forenoon.
This is usually a snuggery under some brush or in a tangle of
dried grasses and ferns. Here I fancy the rabbit backing in and
crowding out a sitting room and then sitting in it. He will stay
in this "form" until you fairly kick him out, and when I have done
this, as politely as possible under the circumstances, I for a
moment see the rabbit making tracks. Ten to one he makes them down
hill, for in that direction lies the cedar swamp in whose almost
impassable tangle he finds safety. Great tracks these are, too,
his short forelegs just serving to catch and balance his plunge
for a second, then the long hind ones coming wide of these,
outside, and landing far in advance. They really look as if the
animal might have made them by turning handsprings as he went.
I never see a fox by trailing him. He goes much too rapidly and
ranges too far. Yet the fox has an interesting habit of following
a more or less regular route. Even when the dogs are after him he
often sticks to his known trail and the hunters take advantage of
this, waiting along his known route and shooting him as he lopes
by, easily outrunning the dogs and as likely as not grinning over
his shoulder at their lumbering eagerness. It is all a game to him
and if man would keep out of it the fox would always win. The way
to see a fox in the woods is to figure out his accustomed route
and sit cosily by it. He likes best to hunt in the dim beginnings
of dawn and again at the evening twilight or by the light of the
moon. But often a fox may be seen jogging along in the full
daylight. The very keenness of the animal seems sometimes to work
his undoing. He knows well that the dogs cannot catch him so he
jollies along just in front of them over his accustomed route
where he knows every possible pitfall of the way. And the hunter
waiting to leeward shoots him. Had the fox had fewer brains and
simply bolted in a panic as soon as the dogs got on his trail he
might have lived to bolt again the next time. Once in a while you
find a panicky fox that does this. When the dogs get after him he
makes a straight streak for kingdom-come and the hunter with the
gun waits in vain.
But on days when there is no gunning going on the fox will
sometimes walk right onto a man. Recently my next-door neighbor,
tramping his oak woods with no thought of stealth, rustling
through fallen leaves and snapping twigs, walked round a corner of
a woodpile and met a fox trotting along in the opposite direction.
The animal gazed at him in astonishment for a second and then
fled. My neighbor accounts for it in this way: The fox has brains.
Consequently he gets into a brown study as a man will, planning
affairs and studying out situations. Woodland creatures whose
living is conducted largely automatically are automatically alert
and do not walk straight up to danger which rustles and thuds
warnings of its presence. It takes a thinker to get so immersed in
his own affairs of the brain as to get caught that way.
The potency of the sun on clear mid-winter days in the woods is
wonderful. His rays seem to put a reviving, warming quality into
the air which has little relation to the actual temperature as
recorded by the thermometer. The forest catches this unrecorded
warmth and with it envelops all creatures. It holds back the wind
which seeks to chill, and by the time the sun is high and one is
weary of swinging along the levels on snowshoes he may rest in
comfort in the radiance. The recorded temperature may be far below
freezing. The actual feel of the air in a cozy, snow-mantled nook
is so genial and comforting that one wonders that the buds do not
start. To go to the southward of a clump of dense evergreens is as
good as a trip to Bermuda. On such a day the noon fire is a
pastime rather than a necessity, though the making of a luxurious
lunch may require heat. To tramp a spot on the snow with the
snowshoes and then start a fire on it is to demonstrate the
non-conductivity of this ermine mantle of the woods. The fire will
burn long before it melts a hole through to the ground beneath,
and if the snow is fairly deep it will remain unmelted beneath a
gray mantle of ashes after the fire is out. There is unquestionably
a primal joy in a fire thus built in the snow of the deep
woods. Wherever man sets up the hearth there is home, and
the first flare, the first pungent whiff of wood smoke, touch a
deep sense of comfort and make the wayfarer at peace with all the
world. To toast bread upon a pointed stick and to broil a bit of
meat in the blaze is to add a zest to the appetite that the
wholesome exercise in the keen air has stimulated. Except as a
zest one's luncheon does not need the heat at such times. So
potent is the oxygen of the keen air and so deeply does it reach
to the springs of life that one may eat his food cold and raw as
the crows do and be satisfied and nourished.
Sitting in the silence and the sun as the fire smoulders to gray
ashes one may take stock of the birds of the woods by ear and eye.
In the still air all sounds carry far. The cawing of the crows
rings a mile across the tree tops, but these are the only winter
birds one may hear far in the full sunshine. The bluejays, so
noisy in the autumn, are silent in midwinter. Rarely, indeed, at
the depth of winter do you hear one of them utter the clear,
clanging call of his race. But the wood holds them still, and as
the campfire burns low they are apt to come about it, knowing well
that beside deserted campfires scraps of food may be found. On
such expeditions they come on noiseless wing, whinnying one to
another in voices inaudible a few rods away. If one sees you he
may utter a single loud note of warning, but that will be all, and
the flock will scuttle away on noiseless wings as they came.
A nuthatch may come to perch upside down on a tree nearby, blowing
his elfin penny-trumpet note, a brown creeper may screep tinily or
a downy woodpecker knock gently at the doors of insects shut
within the rotten wood, but only the chickadees are noisy. Their
volubility is proof against the hush laid upon the forest by the
westering sun, and you can hear them sputtering their way through
the underbrush from afar. Birds in the wood mostly leave a trail
for the ear rather than the eye. On such a day, even in the cold
of January, you may hear a ruffed grouse drum. The seeping sun
warms the cockles of his heart and reminds him of the brown mates
of last spring, and he needs must hop up on the old log and drum
for them, though there is little chance that they will heed his
amorous call. The ruffed grouse has much brain even for a bird, as
his ability to live in our Massachusetts woods in spite of the
omnipresent huntsmen shows, but like the fox, he, too, sometimes
gets in a brown study and may allow you to meet him at a corner.
When this happens to me I am always surprised to see what a fine
dignity the bird has in the woods, unconscious of observation. His
carriage is that of a lord of the thicket, and he seems far larger
and taller than his bulk and length when put to the yardstick
would show. I always think his tracks in the snow show something
of the same characteristics, as if he unwittingly wrote his
character into his signature, as most of us do.
All in all it is a fine sport, this hunting of the wild creatures
of the wood without harming them. To bag them in one's memory or
one's notebook is to accomplish that feat long desired of mankind,
to keep one's cake and eat it too, while he who shoots kills his
joy in the acquiring of it.
At dusk of the still winter day the cold of interstellar space
drops down among the treetops and seems to reflect back toward
one's marrow from the snow beneath. Then I like to preface the
homeward trip by one more campfire. A grove of young white pines
provides the best material for a quick fire. The upper boughs of
such trees so shade the lower ones that they die, but remain dry
and brittle on the trees, full of pitch, making the finest
kindling material in the woods. It takes but a strong pull to
break such limbs off near the trunk and they may be broken into
stove length over the knee or in the hands. Even in a rain the
tiny twigs of these limbs will light at the touch of a match and
no snow can be so deep in the winter woods but they are
immediately available. They make a smokeless fire that gives off a
fine aroma and much heat. In its ruddy glow is home, its
flickering flames weaving an ever-changing tapestry on the
gathering dusk, the black pines standing like beneficient genii
watching over the altar flame in the snow.
Many a woodland thing will stand at gaze just beyond the circle of
this campfire whose flare may shine back from the eyes of a
wandering deer. More likely it will shine from the eyes of the
only night bird of the winter woods, an owl. Perhaps the last
greeting from the woods which the wayfarer will get as he leaves
the diminishing red glow of the falling embers behind him and
fares on under the keen, cold twinkle of the stars will be the
questioning "who-who-whoo?" of the one of the big species of these
birds, a barred owl or a great horned owl. More likely in our
neighborhood it will be the gentle, quavering call of the little
screech owl, a voice of friendliness out of the silence, dear to
every true lover of the woods. With this voice and perhaps a gleam
of the friendly eyes in the purple dusk the chronicle of the day's
sport may well end.